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Jewish genetic ancestry traced to Levant

By Andy Coghlan

MOST Jews in different parts of the world share more than traditions and religious laws&colon; they also share genetic traces of an ancient Middle Eastern ancestry, two large genetic studies conclude. The exceptions are Jews from Ethiopia and India.

“We found that despite all these years of geographical and historical separation, most Jewish communities around the world share a great deal of genomic ancestry,” says Karl Skorecki of the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) in Haifa.

Most Jewish communities around the world share a great deal of genomic ancestry